Stephen F. Miller Memoir

Created ca. 1872. Published February 14, 1905
Manuscript Collection #371
Creator(s)
Miller, Stephen F. (Stephen Franks), 1805-1873
Physical description
0.11 Cubic Feet, Sixty-three page, recently published booklet containing Stephen F. Miller's memoir of New Bern around 1822.
Preferred Citation
Stephen F. Miller Memoir (#371), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
Repository
ECU Manuscript Collection
Access
No restrictions

This collection contains a memoir (ca. 1872) about life in New Bern, N.C., from 1822 to 1872. It includes biographical and informational data concerning politicians, lawyers and other important New Bern figures, as well as descriptions of life in New Bern and historical incidents of the period. An appendix contains transcripts of letters from prominent people.


Biographical/historical information

Stephen Franks Miller was born November 22, 1805, in Trenton, Jones County, N.C. In 1822, he moved to New Bern, where he worked as a clerk. Miller moved to Georgia in 1824 and was admitted to the bar in 1827. Subsequently, he edited the Monitor (Tuscaloosa, Alabama) and in 1848 and 1849 was associated with DeBow's Review and the Daily Commercial Times of New Orleans. He penned this memoir about 1872.


Scope and arrangement

This published memoir mentions over three hundred names of residents of New Bern in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The memoir contains brief biographies of New Bern's merchants, physicians, and other professionals of the period. Also discussed are such topics as schools and teachers, churches and ministers, shipping, town officers, banks, markets, boarding houses, fruit shops, steam mills, dueling traditions, Swiss nobility, freeing enslaved black persons, the "Yankee Influence," and a host of other professions, places, and phenomena.

Biographical and informational data are provided for lawyers and politicians such as Edward Stanly (p. 9), John Stanly (pp. 8, 43), John Wright Stanly (p. 14), Hardy B. Croom (p. 41), William Gaston (pp. 40, 60), Francis Lister Hawks (pp. 11-12), Governors Richard Dobbs Spaight senior (p. 43) and junior (pp. 15-16), and poet Joseph Hutton (p. 20).

The volume also includes discussions concerning various elections and duels involving politicians, performances at a New Bern theater (p. 39), the dog tax (p. 35), the fine arts (pp. 45-46), newspapers (pp. 52-53), wealthy plantation owners (pp. 53-57), the first steam mill (pp. 37-38), the Hardy Bryan Croom shipwreck inheritance suit (pp. 41-42), the Swiss Ipock family (p. 45), a seaman's capture and imprisonment by the British during the War of 1812 (p. 7), and the various religious groups of New Bern (pp. 20-24, 49).

An appendix is comprised of transcripts of letters Miller received from William Gaston, David Lowry Swain, John R. Donnell, and M.E. Manly.

For a related collection, see #147.


Administrative information
Custodial History

November 6, 1978, 1 volume; Memoir entitled "Recollections of New Bern, N.C. Fifty Years Ago." Gift of John A. Clark, Jr., New Bern, N.C.

Source of acquisition

Gift of John A. Clark, Jr.

Processing information

Processed by I. Berent, December 1980

Encoded by Apex Data Services

Descriptions updated by Ashlyn Racine, May 2023

Copyright notice

Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.


Key terms
Personal Names
Miller, Stephen F. (Stephen Franks), 1805-1873
Places
New Bern (N.C.)--Biography
New Bern (N.C.)--Genealogy
New Bern (N.C.)--History--19th century
New Bern (N.C.)--Social life and customs--19th century